It’s another case of attempting to assign the state Legislature’s responsibility to the judiciary.
The legality of a 90-year-old Massachusetts law prohibiting panhandlers from seeking money from people in vehicles now rests before the state Supreme Judicial Court.
It reached this point in part because Attorney General Maura Healey’s office has officially indicated it won’t defend that section of the statute because it violates rights of free speech.
The irony of that position can be seen in the fact that Healey’s office defended the Bristol district attorney in a lawsuit brought by two homeless men — backed by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless — who claim the law infringes on their right to free speech. In addition to the City of Fall River, its police chief, and five officers, the men also sued Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III for prosecuting panhandlers under the statute.
In February, after a lower court judge had prohibited Fall River from charging panhandlers under the law, SJC Associate Justice Elspeth Cypher transferred the case to the high court because of the constitutional issues at stake.
The law as currently written bans people from asking motorists for money on a public street, and extends those restrictions to individuals selling merchandise or tickets to events. It exempts those selling newspapers. Police also can issue permits to nonprofits asking for donations. Violators face fines of up to $50.
It seems the defendants in this case shouldn’t have expected much support from the AG’s office, since it apparently disagrees with a key part of a law it should enforce.
According to the Boston Globe, Healey and DA Quinn last year went as far as to petition a Bristol Superior Court judge to rule for the two plaintiffs, asserting that the law discriminates against people based on the content of their roadside speech.
We can only assume this public statement by Healey’s office was meant as a message to those justices weighing the validity of that particular language in the law.
In the meantime, police can still enforce this statute, since Healey’s office hasn’t issued any guidance otherwise.
It’s true that recent rulings by judges at the federal level have sided with the rights of these street beggars.
Federal judges in 2015 struck down anti-panhandling city ordinances in Lowell and Worcester as unconstitutional.
Lowell’s ordinance, invalidated before it was even enacted, sought to protect downtown pedestrians from overly aggressive panhandlers. It had nothing to do with the particulars of the state law that’s now before the SJC.
As the state — not U.S. — attorney general, we thought that person vowed to uphold all the commonwealth’s laws, without exception.
That’s the position of Gary P. Howayeck, Fall River assistant corporation counsel. In an email, he told The Globe the city’s defending the statute in court because it “can’t pick and choose which laws of the Commonwealth it will follow.”
The AG’s stance certainly injects considerable uncertainty into how law enforcement and the legal community should address this law.
As for the state’s highest court? We trust it will do as it’s done previously with other misguided issues left at its doorstep.
It should reaffirm the law as written, and indicate the obvious remedy — ask state lawmakers to revise the law, if that’s the will of the body.
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A law begging to be pointed in right direction - Lowell Sun
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